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As four of you know from my review, my everything proof phone got all busted up a while back. It dropped from a couple of feet onto the ground and broke. It got me thinking about how fragile phones are nowadays, and how durable they used to be.

So I went old school and picked up this baby.

They don’t make them like this anymore

You might think I’m joking, but you always think that. This phone is the real deal, and probably tougher than anything on the market now. The battery life is off the hizzy, but even if it does start to get low while I’m out keeping the roads clean, I have this.

Hard to get a new phone with a removable battery now.

Not only did it come with a spare battery, but it’s just one button to push to change them out.

Notice the screen now? Fully charged, bitches. I’m good for a week on standby now.

But Birdman, the plastic is pretty soft on those old phones. They may not crack, but they get dented up pretty easy.

Well that’s all good, but what about when you need to charge it up in a week, or when you need to punch in one of the complex codes to see how many minutes you’ve used?

Oh, I see you think it’s my first rodeo.

Booyah! Bases are officially covered.

That’s correct, naysayers. This came with a manual, a wall charger, and a car charger. Any other negativity you want to spread around? This thing has lasted since the 90s, and my S5 Active with it’s milspec casing and Gorilla Glass 3 didn’t make it two months.

Also, I don’t need to worry about getting caught texting and driving, playing Ingress at work, or even talking on hands-free, because there are no capabilities for any of that. That’s a win for me, my employer, and the people on the roads.

So while you sit there and try to figure out how to get a phone like this for yourself, I’ll be happily not looking at my eBay app and safely driving myself up to The Share Shed to see what other sweet goodies are around.

Birdman

P.S. If you were wondering what I did this week, I wrote a post about the new chicken tractor, reviews here and here at Profane Reviews, and I updated a bunch of products at Dirty Bird Soap. You should go check them out and let me know what you think. We always like to know where we can make things a bit better. Not too much, just a bit.

P.S.S. The Father’s Day Fishing Derby is next Sunday, so we will probably be busy helping with that. If you are in the area, come down. Tons of prizes, and you might get to see us hiding somewhere.

First off, I understand that I am media. I just don’t really count my thirty eight subscribers as a media audience to be reckoned with. For the record, you could be number thirty nine if you click the subscribe button in the top left sidebar. It’s just a thought. A really good thought.

Don’t get me wrong, you are all awesome, even if some of you have died and others have been incarcerated, but I just don’t think that what I do here counts for much out there in the real world of media.

So now onto the horrible Gene Simmons and the saintly Prince, whom Gene has so wrongfully smote1)smitten? with his words.

Now I have never been a soldier in the KISS Army, but I have owned several of their cassettes, CDs, and their Oscar worthy KISS eXposed.

I always found them entertaining and intelligent, but never really cared too much about what they had to say concerning anything. They are rock stars and smart businessmen. End of story.

Well, until I saw all kinds of headlines about Gene Simmons and his comments about Prince and drugs. Shit like, but not limited to:

GENE SIMMONS: DAVID BOWIE’S DEATH WAS TRAGIC, PRINCE’S WAS PATHETIC

newsweek.com

Gene Simmons calls Prince’s death ‘pathetic’

ew.com

Gene Simmons on Prince: ‘How Pathetic That He Killed Himself’

rollingstone.com

That’s just three of them, but you get the picture. This all comes from the newsweek.com interview with Gene Simmons where he said things like, but not limited to:

“I think Prince was heads, hands and feet above all the rest of them. I thought he left [Michael] Jackson in the dust. Prince was way beyond that. But how pathetic that he killed himself. Don’t kid yourself, that’s what he did. Slowly, I’ll grant you… but that’s what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death.”

and

“Bowie was the most tragic of all because it was real sickness,” Simmons tells Newsweek. “All the other ones were a choice.” Even Prince? “His drugs killed him. What do you think, he died from a cold?”

and

The one question I have is: When we all start out and we have these big dreams and you finally get your wish—you have more money than God and fame—what is that insane gene in us, well, a lot of us, that makes us want to succumb to the cliché of clichés: drugs and alcohol?

You get the picture, right? I want to throw this in for you to ruminate on.

I have no idea if this is how he meant it, but he’s a smart guy. I would imagine he understands pathos.

Now, I don’t think that he’s 100% correct in most of this, but come on. It’s Gene Simmons’ fucking opinion. He’s allowed to have one, and so are you, but nobody should give a shit about either of them. Who cares what anybody thinks about Prince’s death? He’s gone, and left a shitload of great music for us to enjoy until we succumb to whatever the fuck kills us too.

(In my opinion, this is his greatest hits CD)

The thing that bothered me the most about all of this shit was the headlines. They were only made to get a rise out of everyone. Just to get clicks. Plain and simple.

Now, I am not above trying to sneak a link in here and hope someone buys something from Amazon through the site, but I have never been able to skew things to try and get people to click on my posts because I am playing with their emotions. I could have named this post something like “Gene Simmons Is Celebrating. Prince Is Dead”

Probably would have got a lot of folks in here with something like that, but I couldn’t do it with a clear conscience. How can reputable media outlets like Newsweek and Rolling Stone do it? They know the context in which it was said, so why would they try and trap a bunch of idiots with a misleading headline?

This shit is just perfect for the clicky, emotional hordes on the old FB.

Gene Simmons said what? Fuck him and his stupid pornstar wife. Who made him God? I hope he ODs on valiums. Fucking asshole.2)Tidbits of things I saw when I looked at FB

BTW, nobody made him God. If they did there would be proof that he exists, and we know that ain’t happening yet. 😉

Anyhow, quit clicking on things that make you mad, unless you are going to actually read everything before you share it and comment. You will save yourself a lot of people calling you an idiot under their breath. Unless your friends are just as dumb. If that’s the case, click and share as much as possible. You’ll be the most smartest one on the block, and everyone will follow your lead.

I haven’t been working in I don’t know how long, but since the weather has been so nice, I have been really busy around the house. I have been writing a bit as well, but mostly on Profane Reviews and Granola Light.

I have wanted to write more on here, but there always seems to be something coming up and fucking with my program. Because I’ve been doing so many little projects, it seems like there’s no time to just blow off some steam and write shit that I feel like writing about.

I shouldn’t say it like that, because I really do love talking about soap, worms, gardening, and now mealworms, but I don’t want to curse over there and scare of the gentle folks. It’s sad, but a lot of people get turned off by crude language, honest opinions, and pictures of big, white dicks.

The review site is good for getting my cuss on, and also for trying to creatively work true stories into the reviews, but it’s pretty limited as far as far as reach goes, plus I can’t afford to buy anything to review right now, so I am relying on past purchases.

That’s great and all, but you’re not going to get a lot of people, looking for a two year old SkilSaw, on Google scanning reviews and then buying through your link on Amazon.

I did find that some people do end up on my Swiss Army knife review from Google though. I guess things like that don’t change models every year or so. Why mess with a good thing?

Things are looking up around here. The buds and blossoms are in full swing now, the hills are green, except where they got burned, and we can get back to a lot of spots on the river that we couldn’t when the water was so high. Oh yeah, I start a new job today, and it seems like a good one. It’s only temporary until mid-July, and then starts again in October until April, but it sounds like if someone quits or gets canned, I might get on full-time permanent. That would be very sweet.

There is still some trucking involved, but it’s a 40 hour week, and I’m home every night, so I am not going to complain about that. It’s a steady cheque, and a steady home life, which has been hard for me to find in a long time. I almost wondered if it even exists, but a couple of buddies told me they had it, so I guess I’ll take them at their word. As far as I know, they haven’t lied to me yet.

This job has also squashed my plans for going home at least until July, but it would have been really hard to swing it financially without the job, and at least we can still pay the mortgage. If I don’t stay on full-time, I might try to get home in August or late July for a week and see my family and a few friends. A week doesn’t give you much time, but it’s something, and until Gerri and I can get coordinating vacations, it will have to do.

Anyhow, if you are wondering what we have been up to, it’s mostly over on Granola Light, but it won’t seem very exciting to a lot of you. That’s okay, everyone can’t be interested in everything, although I have been finding a lot of stuff to be interested in. One of them has always been off-grid living, and we met a couple from Havelock that are living here off the grid, and they invited us out to their place to check it out and have a visit. It’s a ways out in the bush, but hopefully one day that we both have off will come around and we can take a good tour.

Originally posted in June of 2012, I was going through and adding Amazon links to posts as people read them and this one came up today. By far my favourite night, and revisiting it has made me feel all happy and shit.

Well, we showed you the first batch of blissful photos from the wedding. Now you will get to see a bunch from the not so glamourous, but much more fun wedding dance. If you see yourself here, but don’t want your photo posted, please go to the Harass Us page and let us know. We can put a black circle over anyone’s head like it’s nobody’s business. I can’t imagine that anyone would have a problem, because like Gadget says: “If you go drinking with a photographer, and a guy with a blog, you have to expect to see yourself online.”

So I have been working on a new blog that will talk about our ongoing lifestyle change. It’s going to be about the little things we are doing to get ready for when we can get an acreage and start the off-grid life we have been planning. It will also talk a lot about where we are coming from and the challenges people face when trying to change decades of programming by a rather uncaring society.

This has brought me to a sad conclusion.

I am not as computer literate as I had previously imagined myself.

I’m not saying that I dreamed myself into a life where I could hack corporate websites to give all the profits to the employees or anything, but I figured I had enough knowledge to be able to follow phone directions on what to search for to solve my problem.

I don’t.

It’s possible that it has more to do with my listening and memory skills than my programming ability, but even after all was said and done, I was on the WordPress forums with an improperly worded question that was probably stared at by a dozen people with blank looks on their faces.

Needless to say, I screwed up when I started Change The Topic. I was spending so much time with it, that I never dreamed of having more than one site, so it was never set up properly to accommodate multiple websites. Now I’m trying to do that, and it’s giving me grief.

I called GoDaddy to see what the problem was, and they found it, but it’s outside of their scope of business. I think they have people who do code and programming and all of that, but it isn’t included in the hosting fees, so being poor and also having nothing to do, I opted for learning it on my own. Brian was quite helpful though, as he did a search and found all kinds of help on the subject. He then told me what to search for and I typed it in before I got off the phone with him, so I would remember.

I should say that I partially typed it in.

As I was typing, a text came in from a friend who was bringing my new batch of worms up from Chilliwack, and I suppose that in the excitement, I didn’t finish the Google search.

Fuck you, self diagnosed ADD.

“installing wordpress into a su” was all that was there when I came back to the computer after getting the worms nestled away into their new bedding.

For the life of me I can’t remember what the rest of the search was, so now I’m waiting for someone to respond to my makeshift forum question.